Ron MacLean was right to point out NHL’s bad refereeing call in Montreal

Hockey Night in Canada host Ron MacLean suggested that a francophone referee should not have been assigned to Tuesday’s Montreal-Tampa Bay playoff game. He has since apologized.

Photograph by: Darren Calabrese
, Darren Calabrese/National Post

VANCOUVER — One of the happy side effects of the Rogers Sportsnet takeover of most of the meaningful hockey television in Canada for the next 12 years is that it is not the CBC.

That means it might not have to be all things to all Canadians — hell, if a privately owned sports network had to do that, TSN would have been buried for its Toronto-centric bias before it got off the ground — and it might not have to be politically correct in every view it expresses.

The CBC, granted, has given Don Cherry an extraordinarily long rope to offend pretty much all the non-WASP factions over the years — Russians, Swedes, French guys (meaning from Quebec, not France) — but it is understood by all that Grapes is a law unto himself, unstoppable, uncensorable, unapologetic, jingoistic, xenophobic ... all good things, for ratings.

But Cherry is the wild card. The rest of the deck, over at the public broadcaster, has to toe the line pretty closely, and the straight men are expected to be extra straight, or else. (See Hodge, Dave, pencil-flip.)

So when Ron MacLean stepped up with an observation about francophone referees officiating Canadiens' playoff games in Montreal the other night, the backlash was swift, and loud.

MacLean, of course, is the Hockey Night in Canada studio host who herds the cats on the panel when he's not attempting, often unsuccessfully, to feed Cherry his cues and keep him from slandering the whole world during Coach's Corner.

The rules are different for MacLean. One false move in his hosting duties, one unpopular opinion, and the minions start readying the sand bags. There's a run on throat lozenges in Ottawa. Parliament is on red alert.

Tuesday, MacLean said the fact that the NHL had assigned another French-Canadian referee to Game 4 at the Bell Centre was a message to Tampa coach Jon Cooper, who had implied that Game 3 ref Francis Charron had jobbed his team, disallowing an apparent goal that was, at best, stretching a rule on interference. The contact was pretty plainly initiated (and milked) by Habs netminder Carey Price, long before the puck entered the net.

There were several other missed calls in the game, including an open-and-shut interference foul by Montreal backchecker Brandon Prust on Tampa's Steve Stamkos that led, indirectly, to Stamkos being concussed by an accidental knee to the head from Habs defenceman Alexei Emelin. Another time, the officials allowed Price to skate to the bench to have an edge honed on his skate blade, giving his exhausted teammates time to recover after an icing call.

At the end, Cooper — whose team was never going to win the series, and ended up swept by the Habs — said he was "pissed." He had a right to be.

Elliotte Friedman, on the panel with the host, challenged MacLean: "So you're saying there should never be a French referee in Quebec."

"Just this time, after what happened in Game 3," MacLean said.

Social media erupted in high dudgeon.

Later in the telecast, MacLean — historically the official's best friend, who reflexively goes to bat for referees even when their calls seem indefensible — apologized for his remarks, saying it's always "divisive any time you become about French and English in our country ... and that's what I kinda triggered and it's easy to step into that kind of mistake."

He didn't help himself by saying that he'd have no problem with a francophone reffing Game 5, 6, or 7 — just not Game 4 — or that he wouldn't send an Alberta referee into a similar situation in Alberta right after a controversial game.

But basically, the apology was for inflaming the great English-French divide, not for his opinion of the events. Was his observation untoward? Hardly. It was fair comment, and outside of Habs Nation, you can bet it was being debated with some heat even before MacLean opened his mouth.

Unquestionably, the rules are different on TV, but on our side of the fence, if we're not asking questions the fans would ask if they were there, we're not doing our jobs.

And the league does tend to be tone-deaf on these things. It wasn't that Charron, born in Gatineau, Que., might be partial to the Habs. A referee wouldn't last 10 minutes wearing that kind of bias on his sleeve. It was that he was a playoff rookie, officiating his first post-season game in the emotional cauldron of the Bell Centre, in front of the NHL's most passionate fans.

That's bad personnel deployment by the league.

MacLean has a right to point that out, and to question, after the assignment has turned out badly, whether it's the smartest decision on the league's part to throw a little more gas on the fire out of arrogance, or stubbornness, at the risk of inflaming an old argument — specious, though it may be — that's been around for decades.

The NHL's alternative, one supposes, to put on an all-Anglo crew, would lend credence to Cooper's complaint, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, what's wrong with raising the question? The studio host isn't a diplomat, or a head of state. He's a facilitator of discussion.

Predictably, one Toronto newspaper is polling readers on the fallout with the question: "Is Ron MacLean's apology enough?"

The options are: (a) Yes. It was sincere and believable. (b) Yes, considering what Cherry's gotten away with. (c) No. He should offer to quit.

Well, CBC has already pretty much quit, or at least ceded control of Hockey Night after this season. The clock just hasn't run out yet. MacLean won't have this to worry about for much longer.

Soon enough, he will be onto other assignments and it will be a different host's job to ask the questions that ought to be asked, maybe even — horrors — to express an unpopular opinion.

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